An extension of the Common Sense Journalism monthly column by Doug Fisher, former broadcaster, newspaper reporter and wire service editor. From new media to old, much of journalism is just plain common sense."In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." - Unknown (often improperly attributed to Thomas Jefferson)
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
"Common sense is not so common" - Voltaire
"Common sense is instinct; enough of it is genius" - George Bernard Shaw

Monday, February 11, 2013

Email with an attitude

You can help me test it however by sending an email to boris@inboxpro.com. Try it now and the following will happen:
Your email will land in my ‘Queue’ box and you will receive a reply
via email with some information and options. The email states that my
inbox currently contains 325 emails and that it takes an average of 3
days, 7 hours and 47 minutes for me to reply to emails.

I hope that message alone will make it clear to people that maybe
they are sending me too many emails and to accept that they probably
won’t get a reply within a few minutes. But it doesn’t stop there. I
also invite the sender to optimize their email for me to ensure I get to
it faster. They can do that by following a link and then changing their
email to one of 4 formats:

1: Yes/No question:
2: FYI Message
3: Short Message
4: Long Message

Each format has a separate ‘Average Response Time’ and it is shown as
you compose your message. Over time it will likely show that Yes/No
questions and FYI Messages are answered faster than Long Questions.

In a few months I hope to have an iPhone and Android app that skips
the whole email part of this setup and just allows you to pick an
address and submit a message format.

There is one more feature that make Inbox Pro worthwhile for me
personally and that is the ‘Expire’ function. I can set a time after
which emails will expire. That means that if I haven’t been able to
reply to your email within one week that simply means I’m too busy to
answer it.

Of course, the equation here is how many people will you offend with those responses? But then again, wouldn't it be nice to add some of this kind of structure that would truly make email useful again as a multidimensional communication channel.

About Me

Yes, I do coaching and consulting. That is the only shameless commerce you'll get from me here. Go to the bottom of the blog for more details.
Who am I: A longtime print and broadcast reporter/editor/producer and then AP news editor who now professes journalism at the University of South Carolina. (But please note, nothing on this blog represents official university policy or sentiment. If it did, I'd be very concerned.)My point: That journalism is a great occupation, that most journalism is common sense and that our problems arise when we sometimes don't use it.What's covered: My interests center on editing and writing and on editors and the challenges they face in a changing environment. I'm convinced editors are not being trained enough to face these challenges, but that common sense rules the day. I'm heavily involved in Newsplex, the new-media newsroom at the University of South Carolina. But my interests are wide-ranging, so anything, from ethics to some aspects of Web design, is fair game.
Hope you find something here worthwhile.

Common Sense Journalism &nbspYes, I do seminars and consulting. Among those I have worked with are the SNPA Traveling Campus, S.C. Press Association, N.Y. Press Association, Georgia Press Association, Mississippi Press Association, Virginia Press Association, Landmark Community Newspapers, American Copy Editors Society, Society of Professional Journalists, Lancaster (S.C.) News, The (Rock Hill, S.C.) Herald, The (Sumter, S.C.) Item, the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration. Contact me for more information.